Mad Barbarians at the Gate in Gettysburg

Leftists and libertarians on one side, and the supporters of Rick Santorum on the other side. That was the more recent “Battle of Gettysburg” that I reported taking place this past Tuesday night.

It seemed to stir up quit a fuss when I reported on the recent “line in the dirt” at Gettysburg between the two sides in that battle.

It wasn’t just my opinion but the actual FACTS that seemed to be in dispute by people who weren’t even there but wanted to continue their attack – on Santorum but also on Romney and Gingrich and all conservatives – which I wrote about. They proved my point by their response to that article.

These are the mad Barbarians at the Gate of the conservative cause we saw in Gettysburg.

These are the people who have targeted you and me just as we reach the beginning of the end of our GOP presidential primary process and the start of the Battle for the White House and the future of America.

On one side for the Rick Santorum appearance were those who either support him or those who wanted to respectfully listen to what he had to say.

On the other side out in the street were what at first glance appeared to be a crowd of leftist protestors. The mad Barbarians, trying to crash the party, to “occupy” the high ground held that day in Gettysburg, by the supporters and friends of Rick Santorum.

To seize as much of the Santorum “earned media” as possible – and they in fact, succeed in getting nearly half of all such media attention (high five’s for the mad Barbarians).

No one has reported that Occupy Wall Street (in the main) is a hotbed of Libertarian Party and/or Ron Paul support so, I suppose, whether you like it or not, you can truthfully report – as I did – that they were together to protest Rick Santorum, and they were literally so intermingled in the street that you honestly could not tell them apart.

But I did go further in my report. I expressed my opinion based on the facts that I reported:

The leftist-libertarian crowd hates not just Rick Santorum. And believe me if you were there with those who provided me eyewitness reports, you’d know they were not exaggerating – the protestors really do very intensely dislike us (or go ahead and say it: HATE us).

There is no doubt of this, and hardly a surprise to anyone who has attended a Conservative Political Action Conference in the past, or watched (as did I) on TV and saw the boos from Libertarians in the room during the standing ovation for former Vice President Dick Cheney, the second most popular speaker in the history of CPAC (behind only Ronald Reagan, who the Gettysburg street people ALSO do not like at all).

No, it isn’t just Rick Santorum they hate.

They hate Santorum but also Mitt Romney and Newt Gingrich.

They hate conservatives. They hate Republicans. They hate all of the above, far more than they hate any liberals or hate any Democrats, about whom incredibly enough, they are very silent.

But there’s more.

They hate you.

I mean the normal conservatives here at RED STATE who actually subscribe to its purposes as I do, and are here to learn or express their views in support of this cause, as I am.

They hate all the normal conservatives and while we are arguing among ourselves about our differences they are laughing because to them – that crowd in the street who represents some of the loudest people in our midst – they are full faith believers (if I dare use the word “faith” with that crowd) in the old maxim of someone most of them know nothing about – George Wallace.

And like George “not a dime’s worth of difference” Wallace of 1968, they say today’s Republicans, conservatives, and the whole “establishment” needs to be thrown out and lets start all over again, and lets knock down anybody standing in our way.

So, I suggested in my last column that you who are normal conservatives – like me sometimes pretty frustrated with what one of our rank long ago called “the stupid Party” you might need to be more careful who you associate with in the future.

Because to these allies of the left (which is what they are) you and I are also the same thing as the “Stupid Party.” We’re all the same in their eyes.

The reason that these folks have influence FAR out of proportion to their numbers is that they spend far more time than other people with families and lives, on the internet, and they are very good students of Saul Alinsky (even if many of them learned from a teacher who didn’t bother to tell them his training source).

And they spend far more time on the attack, including personal attack, against their targets, just as their teacher suggested (Saul Alinksy of course) so they have no ground to defend and their purpose is to put YOU on the defensive.

If you have spent any time here at RED STATE as a reader you’ve noticed how they pop up with the arguments of the left even on these pages, but call themselves part of our team… but their arguments are the same, and their attacks are more often directed at conservatives than at liberals.

In other words, like the recent “battle at Gettysburg” you can’t tell “a dime’s worth of difference” between a leftist standing out there to protest Santorum, and a Libertarian or Ron Paul supporter who hates Santorum and wanted to also “protest.” They stood shoulder to shoulder in their common cause.

How about it, men and women of Red State – shouldn’t we also stand “shoulder to shoulder”?

During the past few years I’ve noticed – especially in social media clubs and pages – that this small minority I am speaking of is 100x more active than our folks are in the internet world.

There are a number of logical reasons for that. For one, less of them have regular jobs. For another, more of them have hourly paid jobs where they go home and they are done – they don’t own businesses as much where you are “at work” all the time.

For another, many are younger and their parents pay the bills and instead of doing homework well, this is what they do.

Many of them have those little “smart phones” they call it.

You know – where you type with your thumbs (how smart!) instead of all 10 fingers, and you squint at a little screen about 3 inches by 4 inches (instead of my 25 plus inch monitor). And so many do NOT use high speed cable for their internet access, nor speak in more than grunts and short messages (it is hard typing with your thumbs).

Perhaps the most innocent and innocuous reason they have an internet advantage over us is that we – the older people – paid for our kids computers, smart phones and internet access. What library’s costs – where you can access the internet for free – was paid for by taxes from teens?

They grew up with this “free stuff” and many of our age have still not figured out why they should even CARE about this Facebook and social media thing.

But before you laugh about them too hard remember, you and I are also paying many of these youngsters to use their “smart phones” right now – some 20% of all hourly paid work hours are now used by employees to surf, send texts and emails etc. – or perhaps to post Occupy Wall Street anti-establishment rhetoric here at Red State and on Facebook. Yes, while on company time.

And so even at conservative-Christian pages their anti-conservative, anti-GOP and Ron Paul arguments sometimes fill a page far more than those who are members of and founded that group.

And if you read the above you will understand better why so many of their “posts” are short, negative attacks which so often sound very similar – they are typing with their thumbs onto little tiny screens. These are not, very often, very deep thinkers.

You can go to the York and Adams County parts of Pennsylvania (as I have) and easily find such Facebook pages but they are all over America. They proclaim Tea Party, 912 or even Christian/conservative but for some of these pages, when you arrive “in their room” you find that it is full of news about the Libertarian Party, or why conservatives and/or Republicans are terrible and are all the same.

That negative, anti-conservative and/or anti-GOP stuff easily outnumbers the conservative messages at best and at worst it dominates, on so many “pages” which attracted your attention because you thought they were conservative and/or Christian oriented.

But I wish to go further and to my point:

Look at your own Facebook page and see: do you have those same people LISTED AS YOUR FRIENDS – the sort of people cheering for or using the same rhetoric as, the Occupy Wall Street/Libertarian Party/Ron Paul group out there in the street of Gettysburg this past Tuesday?

I wish you would understand: they hate us all. It isn’t speculation. Anyone can read and see their words, even here at Red State, although very toned down.

They hate Santorum true – he is the flavor of the month they most hate currently, and he was even chastised by Bill O’Reilly recently.

The very wise O’Reilly chastised him for “falling into the trap” of allowing the media to get him to answer any social conservative questions and questions about his faith.

Any “smart politician knows” avers O’Reilly, “that the media can ask whatever they want but you do not have to answer them, you know what they are trying to get you to say.”

“Of course” says O’Reilly, “they’d never get away with that stuff with me, because this is the ‘no spin zone’ reports the very humble Irishman, a fellow humble but sometime errant Catholic.

His point is that Santorum brought his trouble on himself by stepping out into the public square and (in effect) admitting that he is a Catholic and that he would differ with Nancy Pelosi (as I prefer to put it) in NOT denouncing his own Church’s teachings.

Santorum also specifically differed with another famous Catholic, then Senator John F. Kennedy, who in 1960 said that we Catholics should silence ourselves on matters of faith when we step out into the public square (see my earlier RED STATE treatment of that, including direct quotes and analysis of what Santorum said versus what Kennedy in 1960 said).

But the point isn’t what Santorum said, or the “advice” that Catholic Bill O’Reilly offers, effectively, to follow the self-silenced Senator John F. Kennedy on the “separation of Church and state” and be silent on faith.

Nor is my main point that those protesters in Gettysburg – and the few in here too – hate that strawman they created – that Rick Santorum or the Catholics are “trying to tell us what to do.”

No. They want us to be silenced on matters of faith, as O’Reilly and his ally, the late Senator and later President John F. Kennedy demanded.

My point is that even Mitt “etch-a-sketch” Romney’s “restart” and conversion from a “severe conservative” during the GOP primaries into a mainstream guy in the general election, even Newt Gingrich’s more skillful banter on this subject, change nothing in their eyes.

All these candidates AND YOU who support them, are the enemy. They hate you. They hate what you stand for.

When you offer any expression of your faith it intensifies their hate. They want to tear you down, silence, you, humiliate you, embarrass you.

The mad barbarians in the Gettysburg street opposing Santorum weren’t there to say a single bad thing about President Obama. They weren’t there to criticize the Democratic Senate.

Even the fool who carried a sign saying “Stop Medicaid Cuts” didn’t see the irony.

I was told that one of the conservatives on his way inside, had this fellow step in front of him brandishing his weapon, as if it would win the battle by his making such a stand.

My source reports he dryly asked, “so you oppose Obama’s recent cut in Medicaid.” The poor fellow was totally confused. I suppose they didn’t pay him to actually talk, just carry the sign.

At least with a Libertarian he would have talked…. or is that a disadvantage, if your purpose in being there was to go inside and listen to Santorum?

What then, is my advise to the group of us who, whether we like it or not, are in this together?

Not just advise for my fellow Rick Santorum supporters.

But to the Romney supporters, whose detractors may not have heard him say in the last 24 hours, that he will fight this President “who is crushing the dream, and the dreamers.”

Honestly, even if he did not do all that I would prefer on policy, if he wins the nomination and then does his “reset” with the etcha-sketch plan, he wins the election and then speaks like that good “We Believe in America” stuff for the next four years, wouldn’t that be a massive improvement over what we’ve had to listen to for the last three years?

The country would be far better off with speeches like that from Romney then what we have been listening to since “hope and change” arrived.

And I know those people standing out in the Gettysburg street, will be mad as heck, if they had to listen to a President Romney. Oh you can be sure that same crew we saw in Gettysburg will be marching again if your guy wins.

To the Romney supporters, to my friends who support Newt Gingrich (whose books and movies I have read and watched and who I admire too), I suggest you keep your eye, on who our enemies are and on something very important they have to teach us.

While I see differences (as a Santorum supporter) and each of us may say the same thing – THEY don’t. We are to them, ALL the enemy.

A specific example, even as I am writing this, is another attack-post from such a person at the ACTION OF PA Chester County Facebook webpage where I’d mentioned yesterday’s article about Gettysburg.

Actually the guy had a “wingman” (they often do). The two anti-conservatives (or the same guy with two pen names) on duty there immediately went on the attack on my article of yesterday.

One wrote, “Romney is Santorum is Gingrich is Obama is Bush… All a sham man.. So tired & old.”

I do not know if by this he meant himself, his rhetoric or the candidates.

And immediately above brilliant riposte, another ally of Occupy Wall Street posted HIS attack on the SAME article I wrote. Attacker number 2 attacked me by saying that (according to him) Rick Santorum says that Obama is the same as Romney.

Hilarious.

The two attackers essentially, shot each other – like a circulator firing squad – with their arguments.

They appear to not only NOT read what I wrote but not even what they each wrote attacking me.

And their attacks had NOTHING at all to do with my original REDSTATE article, but only PROVED my point: these guys (and them) hate us all the same.

(No. Do not ask me why are they allowed to do this. I have no idea. It is a Christian-Conservative group, so it says. A rebuttal can be created and have its OWN Facebook page but, the attacks are right there on this groups page rather regularly).

Yes, it is laughable how these “not a dime’s worth of difference” guys attack you from BOTH directions and totally contradict each other in their attack.

But their “party line” or “bottom line” is always the same – the establishment, GOP, conservatives, Romney, Gingrich, Santorum, and you and me: all BAD, they complain.

“Overthrow it all, on with the Revolution, they are shout.

Exactly as the radical left of the 1960’s preached, and exactly as the Occupy Wall Street leftists and their libertarian/Ron Paul friends in the street at Gettysburg, say.

Anybody who would stand with those mad Barbarians in the Gettysburg street is not somebody I’d care to be associated with, not here, not on Facebook and most certainly not in real life.

The Occupy Wall Street leftists and those standing with them denouncing us all the time, there’s not a dime’s worth of difference” between YOU. We conservatives are not “the establishment” but we will defend the American dream from your assault.

Thank you so much for reminding us who our real friends are. Despite our differences, they are nothing compared to how we differ with you mad barbarians at the gate.